


Scents and Sensibility

by SuperLizard



Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Aftercare, Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Cannibalism, Hurt/Comfort, Light Masochism, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mayhem, Murder, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Past Rape/Non-con, Plague, Psychological Trauma, Religious Guilt, Revenge, Rough Sex, Self-Harm, Singing, Suicide Attempt, Wholesome Gawain, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:14:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26046343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperLizard/pseuds/SuperLizard
Summary: Or, Five Things Lancelot Smelled and One Thing He Didn'tRating has changed for the last chapter.Combined content warnings:Chapter one: panic attack, vomitingChapter two: domestic abuse, murderChapter three: epidemic, near death illnessChapter four: near death famine, wholesome cannibalismChapter five: panic attack, suicide attempt, discussion of past rape, past child abuse (this chapter is a victim-blaming free zone)Chapter six: good guys doing murder, severe injury, goreChapter seven: NC17/X-RATED MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY - rough sex, self-harm, masochism
Relationships: Gawain | The Green Knight/The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed), Pym/Red Spear | Guinevere (Cursed)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 168





	1. A History of Violence

**Author's Note:**

> Read content warnings in summary before you continue.

Pain and Lancelot were old friends. They were on a first name basis before he was old enough to understand it. It was a cleansing fire across his back when he turned the whip on himself, seeking out forgiveness and epiphany. It was a reminder of consequence when he failed. It was a reassurance that he lived when times were hard. It smelled like vinegar and rotting cherries. Like most smells people and animals made, it came out in the sweat and in his case, it grew into his hair. His hair smelled like the pain he'd lived through, and the fear, and the hate, the smoke of fires and the salt and copper of blood. It also smelled of horse and pine and camp life, soap and lye, and sweat. He'd been more than happy, in his pursuit of a new life, to cut it short and let it start over. To make new smells of salt fish and honest work and soil and campfire ash.

So when he was standing in the command tent with the others, and the tent flap opened, a breeze came in at just the right angle and carried that familiar scent to him, and he froze. Everything in the world went on, but he stopped; his eyes glazed over and his mouth went dry. His palms were suddenly somehow slimy with sweat. He stood up and jerkily moved to escape with an awkward "excuse me" to Kaze on her way in.

He let his legs carry him away from camp as fast as he could, barely hearing his name being called after him. A few yards into the forest, he sank to his knees and wretched once, twice, then screwed tight his control and managed to keep his breakfast down.

He sat back on his heels, panting, right in time for a voice soft with understanding to reach through the echoing distance of his attack.

"Ah, no. The breakfast didn't agree with you." Slow steps behind him, impossibly soft for them to match the voice's owner, but a lifetime of stealth will do that. 

He turned his head just as Gawain knelt next to him and put his hand on his shoulder, slowly, telescoping the move so as not to startle him. The smell hit him again, overpowering. He gagged, and swallowed, waited, swallowed again to be sure. 

Gawain squeezed his shoulder kindly. "I'll bring you some water. Stay where you are. I will explain to the others."

The others didn't want him to go anywhere unaccompanied until it was clear he was on their side. But the weight of that was nothing compared to the sudden realization. "I did that. I did it."

He wrinkled his eyebrows. "What?"

"The smell, I--" he swallowed again and closed his eyes, ready to hurtle through the confession in darkness, as all of his previous confessions had been. "Everything a person experiences happens to their body the same as it happens to their mind. It comes out in their sweat, urine, and tears. I can guess what someone had for lunch based on the smells in their clothing. The history of a person lives in their hair. I can smell what a person has experienced. Anger, fear, calm, sickness, health, lust." He took a deep breath. "It's you. You smell like me. And that's my. Fault."

Gawain was silent for a long while, then backed away from him a little ways, but didn't stand to leave. Instead, he eased himself back to sit on the ground nearby, politely upwind. "I... Didn't know. Any of that."

Lancelot opened his eyes, ready to face anger or fear or disgust, but he was completely unprepared for the thoughtfulness he encountered instead. It confused him, and being confused made him frightened and angry. He fought down the impulse to shake Gawain, shout at him, give him a reason to lash out-- because he knew the other fey wouldn't do it anyway.

"It is long past time for a haircut," Gawain announced suddenly. "You made an excellent example of good grooming habits and I should follow your lead." 

"...what?"

He shrugged and the corners of his eyes tilted up. He took a short knife from his belt and offered it hilt-first to Lancelot. "Will you do the honors? If I do it, it will look lopsided and no one will take me seriously."

Lancelot stared at him, unable to follow. "I... I am sorry," he explained as if to a slow child.

"I know," Gawain answered simply. "That's why you're here."

He couldn't argue with that logic but it still felt wrong. "I hunted you and you were afraid. I burned the windmill and the smoke and courage is still in your hair. I can smell the pain and fear and despair before your death--"

"Stop." Gawain had his own far-away look now, but his voice was stone. He shook himself, then bravely faked a devil-may-care smile and offered the knife again. "Just. Let's leave that behind us."

"It's my fault," Lancelot whispered.

"Yes, it is. But you'll do better." He pressed the knife into his hand, and reached out to squeeze the other's shoulder again. "Let's leave the past behind us. Let's both do better."

He closed his hand around the knife-- around the trust-- and nodded once, though he wasn't completely convinced he could ever leave that particular sin behind him. "There's nothing can be done better than you," the words tumbled from his lips before he could grab hold of them.

Gawain, already getting comfy sitting next to him, didn't see the blush and expression of horror. He just chuckled dryly. "I am no saint, ash man."

Lancelot had to take a deep breath and still his hands before he dated to touch Gawain's hair. It was a longer time before the pounding of his heart would even out, and the smell of sameness would settle into his nose. He very gently ran his fingers through the many-colored hair before isolating a lock and very carefully sliding the knife through it. When it didn't earn any negative reaction-- no lightning strikes, no earth trembling, no screams-- he continued. He got lost in the task, trying to make it as even as possible and more than a little enjoying the weird tingling sensation that came with casual touch. It was over before he wanted it to be, so he faked cutting a few stray hairs.

Now that he was closer to the scalp, Gawain's own smell was more obvious. He quietly memorized it, wondering if it would be gone again in a month.

When his hands fell still, Gawain turned and gave him half a smile. "How is it? It has never been this short. Do I have a skull like a potato?"

The image sprang unbidden to Lancelot's mind, and he couldn't help but smile a little. "It's fine. You have a shapely skull."

"I'm pleased." He stopped up and popped his back, then held out his hand.

Lancelot stood up also and handed him back the knife. 

"When yours grows out, I will cut yours." He tucked the knife into his belt. "Let's get away from this stinky hair!" 

He watched as Gawain moved back towards camp, and tried very hard not to imagine Gawain's hands on his scalp, in the same manner as his had been. "I... Would like a moment before returning."

Gawain nodded. "I will wait just inside the camp. Return this way, and I will escort you back."

Lancelot bowed a little, and watched as the knight walked away. When he was sufficiently out of range, he retrieved a lock of discarded hair from the ground, and twisted it around his fingers. The smell didn't cause him to gag, as he expected Gawain thought it did. It was knowing that the history of violence built into its very structure was a weight on his soul. 

If he hadn't tracked fey for the church, they never would have been successful enough to pull the youth from their homes and throw them into the defense of their lives. If he hadn't burned villages and indeed mills, the scent of ash wouldn't be accompanied by the vinegar and rot of pain, the acrid fear. If he hadn't slid a knife into the soft parts of him, literally and metaphorically, and handed him willingly over to captors that smelled of feet and hops and hate and lust, there wouldn't be the little white band, the stale scent of despair. The smell of burning flesh.

He coiled the hair carefully into a loop, and tucked it into the pocket over his heart. It would remind him in the darkest times that Gawain had not only been willing to cut away the sickness of Lancelot's past to save his future, but to sacrifice his own history to save Lancelot's soul.


	2. Nothing, He Already Said It Twice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our heroes take out the garbage. Profoundly. People die. 
> 
> CW: domestic abuse, violence, creative ways to die in the woods

Lancelot entered their shared tent with an expression of alarm. He fastened the ties on the flap and paced over to his mattress, but didn't sit. Instead, he turned slowly and regarded Gawain with an intense but completely unreadable expression.

Gawain put a leaf in between the pages of what he was reading and tucked it under his pillow, sat up properly, straightened his tunic, and brushed off some invisible dust from his trouser leg. "Very well," he announced. "I'm ready. What bizarre thing did you encounter?"

"I think," Lancelot ignored his tent mate's flippancy, "that Renault is beating Kaja."

The atmosphere of the tent somehow dropped twenty degrees. Gawain placed his next words in the air carefully, as if balancing them on an invisible wire. Maybe the wire was his patience. "Say that... again."

"I believe Renault is beating Kaja. He stinks of hate and adrenaline, and she smells of fear and pain. She's trying to hide it, but she's hurt. Her arms and chest, I think. The children smell of fear and stress." Lancelot had to jump between Gawain and the exit. "Stop."

He stopped, not even remembering getting to his feet. "You're right, we need a plan." He studied Lancelot's face from his sudden proximal vantage point. "You've seen this before."

He nodded. 

"How many husbands have you killed?"

Lancelot swallowed thickly, ready for it to be the moment his past sins became an issue. "Three."

Gawain snorted. "Less than me. Come on, I think it's time we did something about those wolves that have been checking out the camp."

Lancelot didn't move, confused twice. "Less... The wolves?"

The Green Knight sighed, and then smiled a terrible smile. "Grab your bow, tracker. It's time we went hunting."

-

They circled around the camp in the darkness of the early morning hours, careful not to be seen. They pinched a bottle and cloth from the apothecary tent, then slipped back into the woods. Gawain sat behind the family's tent and imitated the sounds of an early-morning blackbird, trilling annoyingly away. 

Sure enough, muttered curses emanated from the tent, then the flap was thrown back and the faun man of the family emerged, scratching and grouching. He went right past Gawain, into the woods, where Lancelot slipped up behind him with a cloth full of sleeping oils. He fell senseless into his waiting arms.

Gawain like a ghost appeared to take their target's legs, and together they slid into the forest like shadows.

The faun came to before they expected him to, and gave a whimper of fear. The Weeping Monk in all his terrifying glory was standing over him, staring in disgust. "I knew it," he whined.

"Hush," Lancelot ordered.

"I knew you were a murderer still," he whispered.

"He doesn't beat the mother of his children," Gawain reasoned from out of his field of vision. He was striking something against a rock repeatedly, focused on what he was doing. "Don't bother screaming, we're much too far from anyone for them to hear."

Renault hissed. "You?! You didn't even kill this monster, why would you hurt me? I am just a farmer."

"You're the monster," Lancelot informed him dispassionately, though for once he felt a twist of doubt about what they were about to do. 

"I don't mean to do it! I don't mean to do it, she just makes me so mad. She denied me her body. Can you believe that? Her own husband. The audacity."

"Oh," Gawain huffed humorlessly. "There's definitely some audacity here."

"If you don't mean to do it," Lancelot asked, voice as smooth as a lynx on snow, "why does it keep happening?"

He really freaked out then. "I told you, she's a right bitch! She tells her friends all the time how unhappy she is and how she doesn't know how to care for her children. Her own children!"

Gawain's voice wasn't smooth. It was the crack of exploding trees in a winter forest. Freezing, but violent, obliterating, echoing. "You don't beat her in front of others."

"'Course not," he mistook this line of reasoning for Gawain relating with him.

"You don't beat your own mother."

"No, no, that would be abominable!"

"Then you're not really losing control at all. You're just doing what you think you can get away with." Gawain stood up, arranging little jagged pieces of bone between his fingers, at the base, and wrapping a piece of leather ahead and behind them to keep them in place. He stood over the man, then crouched and regarded him closely. "Can't build a society with people like that."

The man started screaming too late.

-

They left the body in the woods. The bottle, they returned to the apothecary. The cloth, they burned. Then they retired to their own tent to clean up and wait for the family to wake and raise the alarm.

Lancelot was unusually quiet. Gawain was having trouble sitting still. He had scrubbed his hands, face, vest, and trousers with dirt and then water before the left the forest, and laid them all out to dry in the tent. He reclined, breaches and undershirt, on his mattress, and regarded Lancelot for a long, heavy minute.

Lancelot spoke first. "How many, before?"

Gawain tilted his chin up, unsure of the motivation behind the question but unwilling to lie. "Eight. Does it bother you?"

"I don't know yet. Did you enjoy it?"

He tilted his head one way and then the other. "Kinda."

"I thought you would want me to."

He made that sound again, that humorless chuff, like a lion. "I will ask you one day. But not tonight."

"It doesn't bother me that you did," he decided. "But it breaks my heart that you had to."

Gawain nodded. "Mine too."

-

Morning came with a search party. Afternoon came with a widow's wailing. Evening came with Gawain as leader of the guard paying a visit to the family, to ask their forgiveness, with Lancelot behind him as his charge. They met with Kaja outside their tent, her four little ones peaking out at them.

"I am sorry for your loss," Gawain started.

She shook her head, still in shock. "I do not mourn him, he did not love me. But I don't know how we will survive now. What we will eat. Who will protect us. Who will chop wood to warm our tent. Who will teach my children to hunt and fish. Who will pay the dowry price for my daughter."

Gawain shook his head incredulously. "We all will."

"We are your village," Lancelot spoke up, unexpectedly. "Your well-being is as important to us as our own."

"You can come to us with any problem, and anything which is mine, you will have a portion of," Gawain promised. "I swear on my sword."

She looked at Gawain like he was the rising sun in the east after a long winter storm. "I will never be able to repay you, and I can never ask such a thing from you."

"You never had to," he promised, and opened his arms.

She raised her chin and summoned her dignity about her, beaten but undefeated, and embraced him. "Hidden bless you, sir knight. Protector of Women."

Gawain kissed the top of her head and released her. "Mother Kaja, Grace of the Harvest, I am your servant."

And that he was, Lancelot felt in that moment like he would be Gawain's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is named after the punchline of that joke abusers tell each other to check if the other people in the room are going to put up with their shit.
> 
> Be a protector. Don't put up with that shit.


	3. As The Elders Did Before You On These Ancient Shores

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: epidemic, near death experiences, our heroes' singing voices.

Many things can threaten a refugee camp. None are any less terrifying than the rest. A fire can destroy supplies and take lives and instill a permanent fear. A bad crop can rot the food stored next to it or a bad trade year can cause hunger and make people ferocious to their neighbors. A rumor can divide people into factions, destroy the ties that people depend upon for survival, push rivalries into the open. But none required the kind of obsessive vigilance, the micromanaging, the care and trust juxtaposed with mistrust and distance, as an epidemic.

Spring always came with sniffles and coughs. It was not unusual to lose a few elderly or very young to the usual diseases that came and went with the seasons. It was not due to luck, however, that they caught the illness that came into the camp with the traders.

It was due to Pym.

The feistiest and most adaptable of Sky Folk harbored a natural aptitude for record keeping and analytical thinking that boggled the minds of the rest of camp leadership. She presented them with a report that seemed horribly mundane.

"Three elders have died of cough and fever in the third row, tenth column of tents."

They blinked at her, waiting for more. She was clearly adamant about something but it wasn't immediately clear what.

"They're family to the traders that returned last week. The illness likely came with them." She looked around to each of them.

"Those traders brought back supplies that were distributed to the entire camp," Kaze informed them. "Should we recall those goods?"

Pym shook her head. "No one from outside the tent cluster has fallen ill. I think it came with the people, not the goods."

"We should isolate the tent cluster until no one is ill," Gawain offered. "Leave supplies in the center. They stay in their tents. An isolated path to the outside of the camp."

Pym nodded. "It's a good start."

"Start?"

This time Lancelot was able to contribute. "If the traders have come in direct contact with anyone, it may have been passed. We don't yet know how this illness is shared except that it be person to person. We need to find out from them, who they've been near."

Pym nodded her impressed thanks. "And also isolate them. And anyone they've come in contact with."

The scale of the need seemed to fall on them like a mudslide.

"Everyone, since Thursday?"

Pym nodded. "Five days."

Kaze, Gawain, and Arthur looked around at each other. "Do it."

No one remembered after, who had given the order.

\--

Lancelot pulled Pym aside as they left the tent. "I can help. I can smell sickness."

Gawain stopped so suddenly he almost fell.

Pym's grim expression at least gained a little energy. "Yes. Yes, that's brilliant. We need to find a way to prevent you coming too close to the potential contacts, but close enough to smell them." 

Lancelot nodded, thinking hard. "Some plagues are spread by fleas and lice. We could ask a garment from each person, smoke them over the fire, and then I will smell. The smoke should not be too much; sickness is like the rotting apples and old hair shirts."

Pym looked mildly disgusted, but powered through it. "Yes. I can do that. I can arrange that."

"No!" Gawain cried, interrupting them. "No, if you don't know how it's spread, don't touch their things!" He brought out the angry pointing finger and brandished it at Lancelot. "Don't sniff something that could make you sick," he turned and pointed it at Pym, "and don't you go handling garments! Just isolate the sick and be done with it."

"You're not my father," Pym informed him with false cheer. "And there is no one else who can do this but us. No one who can question them and expect them to tell the truth except me, no one who knows how to handle contaminated materials but me, no one who knows how to coach others through care routines but me, and no one else who will take all of this on at the same time but me, because everyone else who can do this is dead--"

Gawain sucked in a deep breath, really getting ready for a lecture, but his whooshed right out of him when Lancelot concluded her sentence, "--because of me."

He laid a hand over his heart for a moment, then continued.

"I burned your villages. I killed your healers. I cut off the roads to the places of learning and sacked the hidden libraries. And now, I have an ability to stop this from wiping out the survivors." He stepped closer to Gawain and held his gaze steadily, trying to project confidence that he didn't feel. "Let me do this." For you, he didn't say.

Gawain stared back at him, shadowed eyes wide and tired, suddenly a hundred years old. His mouth worked but no words came out at first, until finally, "Yes." 

He bowed his head and made a noise that Lancelot barely heard and couldn't understand, but he understood the sudden, intense odor of fear.

Before anything more could be said, Gawain turned and marched away.

Pym raised an eyebrow. "What's going on between you two?"

Lancelot stared at her expressionlessly. "What?"

She rolled her eyes. "Okay nevermind that. We'll come back to that when no one is dying."

That suited Lancelot just fine, because people were always dying.

\--

Isolating the tent cluster turned out to be an important first step; within the next two days, all of the elders in the cluster were dead, and several of the middle aged were sick. Supplies were organized and set by the fire every morning, and the waste was taken away every night, but by order of the round table and on pain of death, not a soul was seen from those tents.

It was, as Pym had told them, not enough. In the five days since the traders had come back to the crowded camp, they had met with people from almost every tent cluster. Those people were isolated to their tents with their families, and Pym checked their condition daily. 

The elders of those tents died too, but the others didn't seem to fall ill at all, even past the three to five days since their contact with the traders. Pym asked them to stay in their tents as much as possible, and arranged to have goods brought to them, but the children were restless and the parents at their wits' end from being trapped with them. It almost worked.

Then a Tusk elder declared that the illness was nothing more serious than the usual spring cough, and that elders died all the time anyway. Why should the young fear such a thing, when they had the business of survival to see about?

The Tusks respected the threat of force from the round table leadership at first, but youth began to sneak away from the tents at night to drink, gamble, and see their sweethearts as youth often would.

It didn't seem to matter much at first; the surviving elders seemed healthy and there weren't any unusual coughs reported from the healers.

Until the next thing happened.

Pym and Lancelot were in the healer's tent, going through bags of used clothing for smells. The smell of smoke was bad enough that Pym's eye watered, but Lancelot was able to ignore it. She handed him a bag and checked her chart. "Row seventeen, column five."

He lifted each garment out of the bag, smelled it, and put it back, then pulled the drawstring shut and tossed it on a pile of other bags. "All clean."

"Row seventeen, column six."

Five shirts. "All clean." Toss.

"Row seventeen, column seven."

Three shirts and a baby's blanket. 

"Row se-"

"Wait."

Pym's blood went cold. 

Lancelot held up the baby's blanket. "It's on all of them." He put it back in the sack and pulled the string shut. "What do we do now?"

She shook her head. "We tell them."

"They won't listen. There's no elders in their tent."

"We need some muscle then," she agreed, and stood up. "I'll find Kaze."

"I'll get Gawain."

They ended up practically surrounding the tent, which was perhaps not the best approach. Kaze and Pym delivered the news to a bewildered Snake clan family. 

None of them was sick. None of them had even the least allergy. The father was a fisherman, he had a camp to feed. The mother was a teacher. The baby spent every moment with her. There were a dozen reasons they couldn't stay shut in their tent.

And a hundred people they had been in contact with.

Kaze convinced them to stay in and provide a new garment every third day until Lancelot could no longer smell it on them, but when they had all retired to the command tent, she gave Pym a wary look. "I hope you know what you're doing." And Lancelot an even warier one. "And I hope your nose is right."

He clenched his teeth together, feeling a little nauseous from the implications.

"It's in the wild, now," Pym told them. "We don't know who has it. The last time we checked that cluster was--" she flipped through her notes. "--four days ago. They wouldn't even be coughing yet even if they were exposed on the first day."

"Then Lancelot has prevented more days of spread," Arthur gave credit where credit was due. "You two may have saved hundreds of lives. Good work."

Pym shook her notes a little violently. "It doesn't feel like good work, it feels like we're resetting the clock! It feels like we went back to the beginning!"

Lancelot rested a hand on her shoulder, the way he had seen Gawain comfort people before. "It is going back to the beginning, but we are wiser now, thanks to you."

She released her death grip on her notes and patted his hand. "Thank you. You're right. I'm sorry, I'm just tired and really frustrated."

He nodded. "Same as that."

She sighed. "Alright. Alright, let's get back to work." She stood up. "Can we have tea brought to the healer's tent every hour? I know it's a luxury, but--"

"You can have," Kaze boomed, "whatever you want."

\--

They doubled their efforts. Lancelot carried in bags and sniffed through the revolting laundry of the entire camp. They found others, informed them. Arthur and Gawain enforced isolation orders, and Kaze arranged for supply deliveries. Pym and Lancelot slept in the healer's tent for a few hours at a time, but mostly they drank tea and chewed tree bark to stay awake.

Two days later, people from the first tent cluster began to fall sick. Three days later, another cluster. The rotation of garments began again. 

Five days later, Lancelot woke them both up coughing.

Pym shot out of the tent like an arrow, nearly tripping into the camp fire. Another healer reached out to catch her; she shoved her away. "Get away from me!" She screamed. 

The camp around her fell silent. 

She stood and collected herself. "Stay away from me, and Lancelot, and this tent. Please ask Kaze to come to this fire, but no closer." She smoothed her skirt and took a deep breath, then went back in the tent.

"You don't stink," Lancelot told her a little breathlessly. He was hardly able to recline or lie down without dissolving into a fit of coughing.

She smiled joylessly and mopped his brow with a damp cloth. "But I've been in here with you this whole time. In two days, I will stink."

"In two days," he wheezed, "we will both smell like warmed shit, but that's not because of the sickness." He tried for a jaunty smile, like he'd seen Gawain do to distract people from their fears. "Neither of us has had a bath in two weeks."

Pym sat back and wrinkled her eyebrows. "Did... Did you just try to make a joke?"

He sniffled. "Did it work?"

She laughed.

"Yes?"

"Yes, it worked." She patted his arm. "You're not too bad, Lancelot. You know, I had hoped we'd get to spend more time together."

He barked a laugh that turned into a coughing fit. When it was exhausted, he blew out a slow breath. "Me too. I wanted you to teach me how to mix that yarrow poltice that you do."

"Oh," she quirked a brow. "I am quite proud of that one. Why would you need to mix it yourself when you have me?"

"Well," he began, leaned forward, and pulled his shirt over his head.

Pym sucked in a horrified breath at the sight of his scarred back. "What the FUCK."

"Funny, that's what Gawain said."

"Mmmm no, we're not having this talk right now," she declared. "You're feverish. We'll mix yarrow poltice when we live through this." She took his shirt away and dumped it in the pile for contaminated goods, and wrapped a blanket around him instead. "Can you manage a little water, maybe?"

"Why are you-- what happened?" He asked, sounding lost and a little frightened. "You're afraid of me?"

She sighed, frustrated. "I'm afraid _for_ you. That-- whatever happened to you, I know that it's never going to happen again. Gawain will make sure of that. But I don't know how to fix whatever it did to your mind. I don't fix minds. I can hardly fix bodies." She sank to squat on the ground and covered her mouth with her hand, trying to stop from hyperventilating.

"I-- s-sorry- didn't mean-"

She surged forward and wrapped him in a hug, pressing his face to her chest and rocking him a little. "Oh honey. No no, don't be sorry. There's nothing to be sorry about. I just want you to be well so very badly." 

He smelled salt tears and fear and sadness. His feverish mind wasn't processing at nearly the same rate as normal, so her words took a long time to sink in. "Don't... Don't be frightened. It won't happen anymore."

She shushed him and kissed his messy curls. "Gawain won't allow it," she repeated, consoling herself as much as him.

"I..." He coughed and shivered a little, unused to being touched for so long and definitely not used to being touched by anyone other than his tent mate. "I haven't seen him in some time," he said, lost and small.

"Who do you think has been bringing the tea," a loud voice from outside spooked them.

Lancelot startled, went into another coughing fit, and had to bend over at the waist to recover. 

"Sorry," Gawain genuinely sounded so.

Lancelot turned to face the wall of the tent as if he could see through it. "I didn't realize. We've been so very busy."

"It's fine, you've got to sniff every pair of knickers in the camp twice a week, you're allowed to be distracted."

Pym giggled. She crossed the tent and extinguished their one oil lamp. "Stand in front of the fire," she called out.

The silhouette of the knight standing between them and the campfire was little more than a blur, but it shifted nervously just like Gawain. 

Lancelot made a little breathless noise, unable to manage much else without his ribcage trying to murder him. He watched the silhouette with rapt attention. 

"I know, honey," Pym consoled him, petting his hair. "It feels like dying right now. But you're going to get better."

"I've never felt more alive," Lancelot admitted freely, staring at the silhouette with joy.

\--

The illness ripped through the isolated tents, but only the isolated tents. Everyone knew someone who was sick. No one was talking about letting the young out to play anymore. They were too busy gathering wood for pyres to burn the dead.

Gawain brought supplies to the campfire every morning at dawn. Sometimes Pym would still be awake from the night before, and she would catch sight of him lingering at the edge of the cluster, where it was agreed to be safe. She would take the supplies and wave her tired thanks, but shouting seemed like too much at such an early hour. 

Sometimes she would make the trek to the woods with their shared waste bucket, and she would see him hanging around at the perimeter like he had nothing else in the world to do. At night, he would sleep in front of the campfire, where he hoped they could see him and take comfort, knowing they were watched over, for what little he could do.

When Lancelot was beginning to recover, Pym fell ill. He stayed in the tent and took over her care, as she had cared for him. She coached him through everything as her breath would allow; which waste should be burned, where to take the bucket, when to expect supplies, what to do with the clothes she sweated clean through. He gave her water and coaxed her to eat. He tried to be encouraging, but he was really bad at it.

On her worst night, she was coughing so hard that she could hardly stay upright, but lying down was worse. She sounded like she was choking, but would always manage to draw a breath at the last minute. It would spiral out of control at a moment's notice, and Lancelot began to smell his own panic through the smell of both of their sickness.

Imagine his surprise when she started to hum. First a few notes between coughing fits, then a phrase, broken pieces of a melody he didn't recognize at all. And his shock when she stopped humming and cried quietly. "This is it. I'm going to die tonight."

He held her carefully, as she had held him, and shushed her. "No, never. This cannot kill you. Look at what you've already survived. Look at what you've accomplished. You will outlive us all and your great-grandchildren will tire of your stories of the plague time."

She took a little breath, but just when it seemed she would choke, she began to hum again.

Outside the tent, a quiet but steady voice supplied the rest of the melody, letting her broken lungs set the tempo, but distracting her with the words, leading her through the song. 

Lollai, lollai, little child, why weepest thou so sore?  
Needs must you weep, yea it was set forth  
E'er to live in sorrow, and sickness, and to mourn,  
As the elders did before you on these ancient shores.  
Lollai, lollai, little child, child lollai, lullow.  
Into the world we cometh, and we leave it just so.

\--

She lived through the night, and the next one, and then the fever broke and left them both in an exhausted sleep for an entire day. Finally, when the tent flap opened again and Lancelot and Pym helped each other to remain upright, they faced a bedraggled and gaunt looking Gawain, flanked by a sleepy but hopeful Squirrel.

"What are you doing out of your tent!" Pym rasped, voice ruined for scolding.

Squirrel bounded over and crashed into both of them. "Plague's over already. You're both late. Took your time of it, didn't you!"

"We missed you too, Percival," Lancelot laughed dryly. They all shared a hug.

Then Squirrel declared, "You smell worse than Papa does. You should have a bath. Then we can talk more." He gave them both a stern nod, and left.

"Papa?" Pym asked.

Gawain shrugged helplessly, making his way over to them more slowly. "I have given up. The boy is in charge now. He seems already to rule the camp with a tiny iron fist."

"Long live the king," Pym agreed wryly. She accepted a hug. "Thank you so, so much. My hero." Then she stood back and took a deeper breath than she had in weeks. "He's right, though, we do stink. I'm going to have a bath."

Gawain smiled and looked over Lancelot as she left. He opened his arms in invitation for a hug, which Lancelot gratefully accepted. "I told you not to handle infected things," he groused gently, running his hand down his back and sounding like he was about to cry.

Lancelot was momentarily overwhelmed by the spring grass scent of relief. By the time he could form words, Gawain had released him and was tiredly fidgeting with his tunic. "You look shattered."

"I haven't had much sleep."

"Thank you. For saving us again somehow."

He laughed a short laugh. "I did nothing. You and Pym did the daring heroics this time. Squirrel is right, the plague is over. We isolated the right tents. You saved us." 

Lancelot couldn't help but share his tired smile.

Gawain threw an arm around his shoulders, not wanting to let him go. "Come on, old boy. Let's get you cleaned up and to your own mattress."

Lancelot, not wanting him to let go, put his arm around his waist and leaned on him gratefully. "That sounds wonderful."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is my own translation of a Middle English lullaby. The chorus at least was thematically appropriate.


	4. The Fool's Eucharist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: starvation, cannibalism, blood, self-harm, eating animals one doesn't normally eat

The plague during planting season meant a low yield for what little they could have planted. The majority of their winter cache was forage; acorns, berries, mushrooms, and greens. The illness had taken the strength from everyone it touched, and the camp lost half its hunters and fishers for the season. The butchers and tanners couldn't prepare meat and skins fast enough. Much of their contaminated belongings had to be burned. 

The round table knew it would be a grim year even before the first frost arrived. Tents were brought in closer to each other for warmth. Wood was laid in as fast as they could cut and collect. The few able bodies they had left worked themselves to exhaustion to make up for the lack. Even Arthur, Kaze, and Gawain found themselves doing manual labor for as long as there was light, sleeping only as long as there was dark. 

The days got inexorably shorter. Lancelot smelled the frustration, exhaustion, and despair on his tent mate every night, but could do little about it. Their conversations were short and only covered the necessary. 

Lancelot had no idea what to do in such a situation, so he followed Gawain's example and made himself useful. On days when he had the strength to walk, he foraged in the woods as much as he could-- and his nose gave him the advantage for finding edible mushrooms and dry wood. On the days when his lungs or his legs betrayed him, he sat in front of the tent and fetched arrows, sharpened knives, mended fishing nets, anything he could do without standing.

On the bad days, when the pain in his head and his chest was so bad that the sunlight was an attack, he hid in the tent and hated himself. On these days, he still managed to sweep out the tent, mend whatever of their gear needed mending, and prepare a dinner to await nightfall. 

And every day that he did these things, he could smell the gratitude and calm that these acts gave Gawain, and he was pleased with that. It made the convalescence almost bearable. 

Some nights, Gawain returned so tired that he could only manage a few bites of food before he began to nod off, but he always found the energy to pat Lancelot on the shoulder, or put a hand on his back, or kiss the top of his head.

On these nights, Lancelot supposed that the impending doom was quite bad for everyone else, but he could at least die happy.

\--

The rationing of tree nuts and salt fish began the day after the winter solstice. The game was scarce and their stores of meat long gone. The style in the camp was to chew pine twigs "to freshen the breath." Lancelot barely noticed the difference in his own lot, since he wasn't as active as he had been, but he noticed the difference in the way the others moved, the way the camp was mostly silent. He smelled their despair and the fear for their children.

One evening, Gawain returned smelling of effort and blood, with two bundles wrapped in oilcloth. He gave one to Lancelot and muttered under his breath, "take this inside. Salt it. Do not cook it." And then left with dragging steps towards Kaja's tent.

He did as he was told. The oilcloth contained a full pound of some greasy, gamey meat.

When Gawain returned, Pym trailed behind him with her kit in a basket. He sank onto the floor in the tent with a tired sigh, and began undoing the clasps of his armor. 

A strong wiff of pain confirmed what Pym's presence meant.

"What happened?" Lancelot asked quietly. 

"Bear," Gawain grunted, easing off his chest plate. "Didn't appreciate being awakened so early."

Pym went to work on the talon wound on his chest, where the armor plates had an unfortunate gap. "You remember when you wanted to learn the yarrow poultice recipe?" She asked Lancelot as she worked. "For clotting?"

Gawain's gaze snapped up to Lancelot.

"I have no need," he answered easily. "You were right."

"You're going to need it for this big dummy," she clarified.

"We have you to mix it for us," Lancelot repeated her words from what seemed like a lifetime ago, and cut a strip of bear meat for each of them.

With his shoulder patched and wrapped, they sat together for a dinner of very salty, very greasy bear meat. They tried to make polite conversation, but Gawain was asleep for most of it. Pym left the remainder of the poultice with them in case of need, thanked him, and stood to go. 

"We'll live through this too," he told her. 

She smiled. "Or we'll all go together. And I can't think of a finer bunch of people to die beside."

January found most of the camp huddled together for warmth around the campfires. Gawain went out before first light to check snares and try to shoot a squirrel or fox for their supper. Everything that he found, the lion's share went to those in his care: Squirrel, and Kaja's family. 

In February, there were seven funerals. Never had a funeral been so widely attended in the camp, Lancelot tried to joke one evening, for the pyres at least were warm. Gawain gave a grim smile but it didn't seem to stick.

In March, the sun returned in force, melting the ice and snow, freeing the rivers. Soon there would be waterfowl and new deer, if they could just outlast it. Lancelot took over checking snares and hunting for whatever dared show its face. His nose guided him to some early wild plants with edible roots. Everything that he brought back, he let Gawain take some to Kaja and some to Squirrel. 

Gawain spent less time moving, and more time asleep. He let his beard grow out, unable to summon the give-a-shit necessary to properly shave. He sometimes brought back a crow or a gull. Sometimes he brought back nothing, but Lancelot could still smell blood on him.

Finally, Lancelot returned victorious from a day's work, with three fat geese. Overjoyed, he came into the tent--

And was slammed with the smell of blood. Gawain sat, slumped against the box where they stored gear for horses long gone. He was feebly trying to staunch the flow of blood from his left arm. At Lancelot's entrance, he sighed, "oh good. Help me."

Lancelot dropped the geese and kept forward, clamping a hand over the wound. He reached to where Gawain had wrapped his own belt around the arm as a tourniquet, and synched it tight enough to make him grunt. He found the poultice left over from the bear attack and smeared it in the wound, pushing the prickly root pulp in between the paper-thin skin. He tore a piece of cloth from his own blanket and pressed it to the wound, bound it up.

Then he sat back and really let him have it.

"WHAT are you DOING TO YOURSELF," Lancelot roared.

Gawain's eyes went wide, almost too big for his head. It took a long time to find the words. "Kaja's youngest... She's so weak from it. There was nothing left, I..." He fell silent, still in shock from Lancelot's rare display of emotion.

"You---" he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to think. "You fed a child your blood."

He answered slowly, painfully slowly. "Yes."

Lancelot's head was a hurricane of worry and religious imagery. As many times as he had marvelled at the idea of the Christ giving his blood for the forgiveness of sins for all mankind, here was his beautiful, foolish knight giving his blood for a single fey child to survive a day more. He couldn't wrap his brain around it, it was too much. "It's over now," he said instead. "The birds are returning. I've caught us three geese. We will eat meat tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day. And you." 

Gawain waited patiently for him to say more, but instead, Lancelot pressed his forehead to his.

"Oh you," he said tearfully. "Let this be the last sacrifice."

Gawain registered that Lancelot's tears were falling on him, but he didn't understand why. He reached up and brushed one clear from his marked cheek.

"I'm going to take a goose to Percival, and one to Kaja, and then I'm going to cook a whole one for you." He held up a finger to stop Gawain from objecting. "For you." And he left, unable to be in the same place as his legendary tent mate a single moment more.

When he returned, Gawain was fast asleep.


	5. Taboo / l'enfant qui a été outragé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By popular demand and a great deal of discussion 
> 
> CW: aftermath of child molestation, panic attack, self harm

The relative bounty of spring came with the opening of the waterways. Almost as soon as the last big piece of ice broke, a longboat wound it's way close to the camp and anchored. It had been seen from far enough away that they could have hidden in the woods, but Pym hiked out to the river herself to greet it, sure that it belonged to a friend.

She was right. The raiders crew we're pleased to see her and welcomed her aboard for hospitality as they unloaded crate after crate of cargo; sorely needed food, textiles, and medical supplies. Wrapped in a blanket and with a cup of hot wine in hand, she recounted their terrible winter to her old crew.

She spent the afternoon with them, and then they bundled her in wool and tossed her on top of a cart and let her ride with them to the camp. They arrived in a commotion of singing and shouting, paying no mind to the bewildered and traumatized reactions of the fey. Pym set an example of unpacking boxes, and gestured for anyone who passed by to help carry goods back to the healer's tent cluster.

Arthur, Kaze, Gawain, and Lancelot appeared slowly, having abandoned their other tasks to investigate the commotion.

The raiders' smiles and garralous carrying on lessened as they saw the shadows of the fey they had known from the beach.

The Red Spear captain even toned down her aggressiveness to pay respects for their losses. She shook hands with every member of the round table, and inspected them with a rough kind of care. "We came as soon as the river cleared. There are supplies for maybe a month here, while you get your legs under you again."

"Thank you," Kaze said, unusually emotional. "Thank you so very much. It has been a hard winter."

"Our healer told us about it. She sent a pigeon before the solstice." Guinevere clapped Pym on the shoulder. 

Pym blushed. "It seemed prudent at the time."

"Well done," Arthur told her, but not taking his eyes off of Guinevere.

Lancelot side-eyed Arthur, then Guinevere, then Pym. As he looked like he might say something, Gawain patted him on the shoulder and gestured away with a tilt of his head. "Let's go see to those crates."

Lancelot pressed his mouth closed, thinking hard, but then accepted that his tent mate was probably wise to walk away in that moment. He followed dutifully.

The rest of the evening and into the night was a celebration. Finally having food security lifted an enormous weight from all their shoulders. There was feasting, music, bonfires, and dancing. Nightfall found the round table and the raider crew dancing around the same fire, sharing the same wine and ale. 

Lancelot watched the carrying on with wide eyes, as if he had never seen a party in his life.

Gawain stuck close by him at first, but first Pym pulled him away to dance, then Pym AND Kaze, then Pym and Kaze AND Guinevere, then he had to tap out when Squirrel hopped on his shoulders and he ended up being legs for Squirrel to "dance" with whomever dared. Exhausted, he came back to Lancelot's side and collapsed on the ground, arms and legs splayed. "I am done." 

Lancelot made as if to stand. 

"Where are you going?"

He looked quizzical. "You are done, so we may leave."

Gawain sat up. "Are you having such a bad time? Don't you want to dance or drink? P is an excellent dance partner."

Lancelot slowly sat down again, unsure of what exactly to do. "Pym is exceptional."

Something in Gawain's chest cracked and bled. "Yes, she is."

He watched Arthur trying to dance with Guinevere and earning only looks of annoyance. "Arthur seems to have a type."

Gawain raised an eyebrow, grateful for the distraction. "He indeed seems to like strong women."

"If he liked strong women, he'd pursue Pym. He likes aggressive women."

He swallowed, something stuck in his throat that he couldn't clear. Something that pounded wildly and hurt to escape. "If he liked aggressive women, he would have pursued Kaze."

Lancelot grimaced. "I don't think Kaze likes men very much."

"I don't think Pym does either," Gawain failed to catch the words before they fell. The shadows from the fire and the noise of the music covered the sound of him grinding his teeth.

He was quiet for a long while. "Is it... evil?" He asked, voice so low that he almost went unheard.

Gawain leaned over to hear better. "Is what evil?"

"That... That a woman may enjoy another woman's company... in this way."

He blinked, confused. "No. It-- who told you that?"

Lancelot bowed his head and said nothing.

"Oh. Oh, no." He sat up properly to give his full attention. "Anyone, presuming they have attained the age of majority, in all fey cultures, may enjoy anyone who consents."

He watched Gawain solemnly. "Consents?"

"Yes. All parties must be willing to engage in any romantic or sexual activities. To force romantic or sexual attention on someone unwilling is taboo." He watched the flurry of emotions passing over Lancelot's face with a growing sense of dread.

Lancelot bolted. He fled from the party at a dead run, out of the camp, all the way to the river, and threw himself on the bank. He tore off his shirt and threw it aside, then his trousers, then he ran into the freezing water until it reached his chest. He scrubbed his face with his hands, and his neck, and his chest, scratching at his skin until it bled.

Footsteps followed his, and a voice echoed after, but he couldn't make himself listen. The voices of the past were so loud that they blocked out everything else. He wanted to drown them out, so he dove under the water completely.

Gawain panicked the instant before his tent mate fled, knowing that the terror and disgust could mean only one of two awful things. Either Lancelot had raped someone, or someone raped him. The fear of what he might do blocked out everything else; the green knight hurtled after him to the river just in time to see him scratch at his face and then dive under the water. He threw aside his belt and sword, and went in after him.

Lancelot felt something collide with him, then an arm wrapped around his middle and his head broke the surface. He didn't want to be touched. He didn't want to be touched ever again. "No," he screeched. "No no no no no no"

Gawain suffered his wailing all the way to his soul. He hauled the distraught fey out of the water and onto the shore, trying to get a good look at him in the dark.

The raiders watching the boat had seen everything, were coming with torches. He was grateful for the light, but would have to deal with the fallout of an audience later.

"Lancelot, look at me," Gawain begged him. "Look at me. You're here at the river. There are none who will harm you. I am here with you. It's just before midnight. Look at me."

"No, don't touch me," he whimpered, curling into as small a thing as he could.

The torchlight fell on them. He turned and gestured them to stay back.

"Is he well?" A raider asked uncertainly.

He bit back a sarcastic response. "No," he informed in as calm a voice as he could manage. "Something has happened to him a long time ago."

"I'll fetch Pym," the raider offered helpfully.

"Many thanks. Tell her to wait in Lancelot's tent. I will get him there."

The torchlight vanished. In the shadows and moonlight, Lancelot's pale skin practically glowed. Without his usual attire covering almost every inch of him, he seemed so vulnerable, like a turtle that had somehow left its shell.

Gawain didn't touch him, but rather kept his open hands spread between them, so Lancelot could see. "I won't touch you. But it's still very cold, and you are wet." He took off his quilted over-tunic and offered it to the dripping, traumatized creature. "Will you dry yourself off?"

Lancelot lifted his eyes to the tunic but couldn't bring himself to look at Gawain. After a moment, he accepted it, clutching it to his face and neck for a moment. In a tiny voice, he said, "you smell like oak and steel and nettle."

He had no idea what to make of that.

"All of our things smell like oak and steel and nettle because you leave your clothes everywhere." He regarded the tunic closely, his fingers wrapped in the fabric. "After you realize, they won't anymore."

Gawain swallowed back a lump of anxiety, and steadied his voice. "There's nothing you could say that would make me leave you, except if you ordered me to go." 

"Many men have enjoyed me. When I was young, and weak. As a p-" he choked and buried his face in the tunic, breathing in the bouquet of smells that he knew in his heart would be his last tie to his dearest friend. "As a punishment, for being a demon, and they said God had made me for that, and they would f--"

He choked again, curled further in on himself, and closed his eyes. He held his breath until he thought he might faint, then inhaled as deeply as he could. The rest came out in one mighty breath, all crushed together like there wasn't enough room in his lungs. 

"They-would-fuck-the-evil-out-of-me-so-I-could-be-saved-in-the-eyes-of-our-Lord-and-it-was-my-fault-for-tempting-them-because-I-was-a-thing-made-by-Satan--" he got to the end of the breath and inhaled again, well into a fit of hyperventilating. "-and-I'm-disgusting-and-dirty-and-I-don't-understand-why-it-kept-happening-when-I-tried-so-hard-to-be-good."

"You are pure and good," Gawain tried his damndest to be reassuring, but he was panicking inside himself. "You are kind and gentle to the deserving and you are honest and those men were wrong. They were so wrong to harm you, so wrong about you, so wrong in their own hearts. You're safe here with me. We are at the river. There are none who can harm you. I won't let them."

"You didn't leave," Lancelot sobbed. 

"If you order me to go, I will go. Not before. I am here with you. To the end of everything."

"Don't go." He opened his eyes and they were as pale as the rest of him in the moonlight, shining with tears and rimmed dark.

"As you wish," Gawain told him. "I am at your service. Whatever you need from me, you will have."

He hiccuped, staring into his eyes and searching for anything. Whatever he wanted to find, he found it; his breathing slowed and steadied. "It's cold," he said after awhile.

"Yes," he agreed. "You should dry off."

He looked at the tunic as if he had never seen it before, and then awkwardly began to pat himself down without unfolding too much.

Gawain turned his face to grant him some privacy to collect his clothes and dress himself, then when Lancelot walked to stand beside him, he offered his arm. 

Tentatively, very gently, and shaking like a leaf in a storm, Lancelot placed his hand in the crook of his arm, and let himself be led back to the tent.

In their tent, Pym waited with the lamp up and a tea pot nearby, pacing and wringing her hands. When her boys entered the tent, she stopped and stood very still. "Lancelot, how are you feeling?"

He couldn't bring his eyes up from the ground, but he managed to answer in a shaking voice. "A little nauseous. I--" he exhaled. He clung to Gawain's arm suddenly, like he might fall. "I had a panic attack, I think. Gawain talked me through it."

Pym nodded. "If you want, I can dry your hair. It's cold out."

"Please don't touch my head," he requested. 

She nodded again. "Okay." She clasped her hands in front of her, as small and non-threatening as can be. "I brought some hot tea, that might help ward off a chill and settle your stomach. I'll pour a cup, and if you don't want it, you don't have to drink it." 

Gawain guided him to sit at the little semi-circle of crates that had become their make-shift sitting room, and did not release him until Lancelot took his hand back. He hovered nearby, keeping himself hunched and small, staying lower than Lancelot.

Pym passed him the teacup carefully.

"Thank you," he told her mechanically, but he wrapped his hands around the cup for warmth. 

They sat and were quiet for a long time.

"Gawain tells me that forcing sexual attention on someone is considered taboo."

Pym kept her expression calm but screamed on the inside. "Yes. It's called rape. It's a crime."

"I was raped." He took a sip of his tea, and waited for a long moment. "You're still here," he noticed flatly.

"Lancelot, I'm sorry that happened to you," she told him. "If we ever see the people who did it, you should point them out to us, and we will make sure they hang for it."

"You're not angry at me?"

The internal screaming intensified. "No. It's not your fault, Lancelot."

"I didn't say no," he mumbled.

"You were a child," Gawain consoled him. "You didn't have to say no."

Pym swallowed the flailing thing that her heart had become, and focused on her friend. "It's never your fault," she repeated. "We are horribly angry with the people who did this to you. It is their fault."

He sipped his tea carefully. It was salty. He realized fat tears were rolling down his cheeks, and he didn't even feel them. Odd. "They were evil," he said aloud, testing it out. He looked up and the teacup fell out of his hands. He reached for Pym. "Please--?"

Pym covered the short distance and wrapped him in a hug in the same instant, being very careful not to touch his head as he had requested. "Oh sweet boy." 

"This is what you meant," he whimpered, burying his face in Pym's tiny shoulder. "This is what you meant when you told me I didn't anymore know the difference between cruelty and kindness."

Gawain internally had to admit that he suspected something like this for a long time, and yes, he had meant it, but when the confession arrived he was still unprepared. Because how does one prepare for something so horrible? "Yes."

"You knew all this time," he wondered. "You didn't mind."

"Yes. No, I didn't mind." He took a deep breath. "It's yours to tell. But I have never blamed you for it not considered you as you considered yourself."

Lancelot turned his head slightly, looking over the top of Pym. "You--"

Gawain waited patiently, though inside he was twisting and raging. 

"Please--?"

He leaned over and wrapped them both in his arms. 

"It's not my fault," Lancelot whispered. "It's not my fault. It's not my fault." He couldn't tell anymore whose tears he was smelling. He held on to Pym's smell of tea and vagabond's rose, and Gawain's smell of oak. He wanted his entire life to smell like them, for his own smell to disappear under the cover of them, to never exist again except in the context of the ones who kept him safe.

"It's not your fault," Gawain repeated, voice breaking. "You're safe here with us. There is no one who can hurt you."

They sat like that for a very long time.

\--

The next day found Gawain sitting at the eater's edge, methodically running a whetstone along every blade that he owned. The water and the stone on the blade was the only sound.

On the deck of the long boat, Guinevere stood watching him with the members of the crew who had morning watch. "How long has he been doing that?" 

"About an hour, Captain."

"Has he done anything else?"

"No sir."

"Anyone else with him?"

"No sir."

She watched for a moment more, then walked the rope to the shore and approached him slowly, making sure to kick up a racket in the leaves so he wouldn't be started. "Sky man."

Gawain stopped, but did not look over.

"What was my healer doing in your tent?"

He slowly turned to look at her. His expression was enough to stop her coming any closer. "Mending a friend."

"Your pale friend? The gangly one that looks like a ghost."

He supposed that was a good enough description. "Yes."

"How was he injured? The crew says he threw himself in the river. It's colder than a witch's tit, so I assume he was trying to kill himself."

"Maybe," he answered evenly. He turned back to whetting the inside edge of his sword. "He was hurt long ago. It stayed in his mind."

Her expression softened, deciding that neither of them was a threat to her Pym. She crossed her arms. "What are you going to do about it?"

"I," Gawain told her frankly, "am going to kill every churchman I see, anywhere on the isle. Then maybe I will go to Jerusalem, and kill churchmen there. And then I will go to Rome, and kill their king. And when I am done with them, if he is still afraid in his heart, I will kill every human."

She smiled a terrible smile. "Good plan. Let me know if I can help with the first part."

He watched her flatly for a moment, then nodded. "I thank you for your assistance. But it would give me great joy to present the church-king's head to my friend."

She smiled wider. "I understand completely."

And he figured she did.

\--

Pym spent the day with Lancelot, talking about nothing and everything. He didn't speak unless absolutely necessary, but seemed to get more nervous as the day went on. She brought him back to his tent around tea time and they stayed there together, her chattering to fill the void until she could say no more, then they just sat together.

Gawain returned around evening, and stood outside the tent for a long time.

Pym excused herself and met him there. "Where. Have. You. Been."

He shook his head. "He won't want to see me right now. A big, male authority figure?" He shifted his weight uncertainly from one foot to the other. "I can sleep in the command tent if he prefers."

Pym walked around behind him, planted her hands in the middle of his back, and pushed him physically towards the tent. Given that she weighed slightly more than half him, he didn't move.

He looked back over his shoulder at her struggles. "So, he wants me to--"

"Yes," she gasped, giving up. "Just go in, you giant goon."

He rolled his shoulders and considered it. "I have all of this anger, and I don't know where to put it. Where do you put something like this? I might scare him."

"Shove it up your ass for all anyone cares right now, just go. To. Your. Friend. He needs you." She shoved him again for good measure. 

He waited a moment. "It's kind of fun watching you struggle, though."

"I hate you. Go protect that broken boy." She straightened her skirt and marched off towards the river.

Gawain took a deep breath, and went into their tent.

Lancelot looked up at him with visible relief. He stood and then hesitated, not really sure what to do with his hands.

He looked at his tent mate helplessly. "I wanted to bring you the head of a churchman but the others say I will expose the camp."

He smiled a very small smile. "Thank you. Let's pretend that you did. I would nail it to the center tent pole so we could look at it while we take meals."

He smiled back tentatively. "We can remind it that it was so dumb and inept that the only way it could get into fey territory was by getting decapitated and carried there."

"You can tell it all your jokes first to see if it will laugh before you tell them to real people."

He blinked. "Hey--!"

Lancelot grinned, and patted him on the shoulder. "Come in and sit down. It's been a very long day." As they settled on their crates and Gawain began removing pieces of his armor, Lancelot took a deep, long breath.

"Are you smelling me?" Gawain asked, suddenly self-conscious.

He regarded him steadily. "Yes."

He smiled. "Joke's on you, ash man. I haven't washed my clothes in ages."

"I know," Lancelot huffed dramatically. "And I have to live with you." Oak, steel, nettle, and the warm coals of the hearth.


	6. Love and War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love doesn't have a smell.
> 
> Blood does.
> 
> CW: gore, violence, protagonists doing murder, amateurs doing stitches

In early summer, everything began to fall into place. The suffering of the previous year had fed the earth enough tears and blood that they were rewarded with an incredibly bounteous haul of game, fish, forage, and crops. As in times of plenty, the humans minded their own business, as it was much more difficult to convince young men to turn to the sword when they were neither hungry nor angry. 

One evening, as they were having their supper, a familiar voice called, "Sir knight, by your leave?"

"Come in," Gawain invited, putting aside his knife and wiping his face.

Kaja slipped into the tent, beaming. "Sir knight, I have good news. I wish to release you from your promise to my family."

He turned his head a little to regard her with a careful smile. "I will allow this only if I can meet this new beau of yours, and if I find him worthy." He stood and followed her outside, Lancelot joining them for the curiosity.

A very nervous faun man stood outside the tent, dressed to the nines in his finest and trying to be as tall as possible. He swallowed his anxiety and greeted them. "Sir Knight. I ask you to release Kaja and her family to my care, that I may protect and serve them until death may part us."

Gawain smiled, hands on his belt, knowing he cut an intimidating figure both from his physicality and his reputation. "You think yourself worthy of this honored lady?"

"Sir, I do not, but she will have me, and I will do my best by her. I have three fine horses and I bring a handsome living as a saddle-maker. I can hunt and fish. I am well able to provide all that they need."

"Nevermind all that. Do her children love you?"

He blinked. "I believe that they do."

Kaja leaned in and whispered to Gawain, "The youngest already calls him father."

Gawain tried not to smile too hard and give up the game. "Very well. And Kaja, do you accept this one and all the trouble that follows him, all the past that he carries, and all the future will hold?"

"Sir, I do," she cried happily.

"And you--"

"Royen, sir."

"Royen. Do you agree to embrace this lady even in her darkest hours, to treat her with respect, to give her sovereignty over her own life, and to make her family your own family?"

"With all my heart, I do."

Gawain stood a little on his toes, pleased withal. "Very good. I approve of this arrangement and release Kaja from my stewardship. I hope you will grant me the honor of officiating your joining."

Royen was speechless but thrilled.

Kaja squeezed Gawain's arm. "The honor would be all ours."

He gestured. "Go in joy, friends, and tell the world what was decided here."

Kaja whooped and threw herself at Royen who caught her joyously and spun her around, then carried her off into the camp.

Lancelot regarded him for a moment. "I didn't know you can officiate at ceremonies."

Gawain shrugged. "So far, no one has stopped me."

\--

The next day, as they were attempting to read and relax under an oak tree in the worst heat of the afternoon, Squirrel ran up to them at a million miles an hour, leapt over Lancelot, and landed on Gawain.

"Oof!" He objected, book falling on his face and all his wind leaving him. When he was again able, he removed the book and glared at his adopted son. "What is it, Percival?"

He pulled a face. "You know I hate it when you call me that."

"I hate it when you jump on me, yet here you are."

"I'm not going to stop doing it, though."

"Well then, Percival, we are at an impasse. What is it, Percival? Do you bring news from the other Percivals?"

Squirrel hit him in the chest with a tiny fist.

"Ooh you got me," Gawain mimed a serious injury from the punch. "I'm defeated. Dead. Totally obliterated. Whatever it is, Lancelot will have to deal with it."

Lancelot looked mildly alarmed. "Wait, how did I get dragged into this?"

"But Arthur told me to tell you, not Lancelot! I will keep my promise!" He leaned down and whispered in Gawain's ear, then sat back with a half-feral smile.

Gawain lifted the boy off his chest and sat up, gathering his book. He climbed to his feet, then picked up Squirrel under one arm and carried him like a sack of potatoes.

"Where are you going?" Lancelot called after them.

"Round table business," he answered grimly. "You're coming too."

He sighed, reluctant to leave the cool shade of the tree and the quiet moment with his tent mate, but duty called. 

\--

In the command tent, Arthur and Kaze had already placed the red stones on the map, several miles from the camp but still too close for comfort. They waited patiently for Gawain and Lancelot to join them.

Gawain set the flailing Percival back on his feet. The boy scurried to the top of a stack of crates that would give him a better view of the table. Lancelot and Gawain closed the circle.

"While foraging, one of ours spotted a collection of at least eight paladins camping on the road, here. There were no long-term installations in the camp, only a few tents and a fire, and their horses were tied to the trees." Kaze looked at Gawain directly. "You wanted to kill some churchmen."

Lancelot regarded Gawain curiously.

"I do indeed," he practically growled. 

"You need to get around them. Make them think you're coming from the north, so if any survive, they will lead reinforcements in the wrong direction." Kaze grinned a grin that was more a show of teeth. "You can go as soon as night falls. Happy hunting."

Gawain grinned the same grin back. "Thank you."

"I want to go, too," Squirrel complained.

This time, Gawain regarded him solemnly, standing in front of the crates to look him in the eye evenly. "I know you are brave. I know you are a remarkable resource in a fight. And I appreciate that the last time turned out well enough in the end. But I died believing you would be tortured and killed for trying to save me, and if that happens again, I don't know that all the luck and magic in the world will save us. I can't fight my best knowing that you are in danger. I need you to stay here."

Percival took in this confession with the same grave manner that it was given. "Yes, papa."

"Do you swear to stay?"

His mouth quirked, disappointed at being found out. "Fine, I swear to stay in the camp while you go on this mission."

Gawain put a hand on his shoulder and kissed the top of his head fondly. "Thank you. I will bring you back something interesting from their supplies."

\--

He and Lancelot left that evening, like shadows. They went to the river and applied mud to every exposed inch of themselves, and to the buckles and metal bits of their armor and gear. Thus camouflaged, they slipped through miles of forest unnoticed, even by the night birds and mice. 

They came upon the camp exactly where it was reported. Lancelot looked it over and grabbed Gawain's arm, then held up seven fingers to indicate the number of monks. Gawain gestured that he would go around the east side of the tiny camp, and then made a throat-slitting gesture. He pointed to the west side of the camp, and then at Lancelot. Lancelot nodded. Gawain clasped his shoulder with that terrible, feral smile. Lancelot smiled back, excitement in the pit of his stomach and the top of his throat.

They split and went in different directions, carefully, slowly, creeping along so as to not snap a twig or startle a sleeping animal and give away their presence. 

Gawain slipped an extremely sharp knife through the fabric of the first tent, peeled back the new flap, and ducked his upper body into the space. Two monks lie sleeping, one on his back and one on his side. Almost too easy. He clamped a hand over the first monk's mouth in the same moment he slipped his knife between the second and third cervical vertebrae, to prevent him thrashing. Once he had sliced enough nerve that the blanket was wet with spinal fluid, he popped the knife out and drew it across the human's throat in one move, blocking the spray of blood with his own upper body. Once he felt the man stop breathing, he turned and did the same to the second occupant of the tent.

He slipped back out of the back of the tent and moved to the next, listening for a moment to be sure they were still asleep. Satisfied, he cut the fabric of the tent.

Somewhere to his left, he heard a human call out in terror, then a voice he knew better than his own, shouting in pain. The benefit of stealth lost, he drove his knife into the first man's throat and then dragged the tent down on top of them both, escaping and throwing himself into the middle of the camp with a vicious roar. He cast about for Lancelot and spotted him backing toward the forest with two angry paladins after him, both in their undergarments but brandishing small hatchets. 

He was bleeding.

Something in Gawain's head made a snapping noise. In the next moment of clarity, Lancelot was at his back, shouting his confusion. The two men lay dead at his feet, missing chunks of their necks. He spat blood at the monk who had finally extricated himself from the mess of his own tent, and was about to leap at him, but Lancelot danced around in front of him with sword in hand and decapitated him with a swift mercy.

Lancelot turned to regard Gawain with a strange look. "What in hell was that?"

Gawain caught his breath, and spat more blood. He wiped blood off his face. Where was it coming from? He didn't feel any wound on his head that would gush like that.

Oh right. Missing throats. That would do it.

Lancelot let him cool down, instead checking the tents for signs that there may have been someone outside the camp, who could return to cause them trouble. There were none. He recovered a skin of water and a blanket, and began tearing the blanket into strips.

Gawain accepted the water skin and rinsed the blood from his face, then reached for Lancelot's wounded arm.

"Stop that," he chided. "Sit down before you fall down."

He scowled. "To the hills with your death wish, that needs binding. Let me have a look at it."

Lancelot put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him to sit on the ground. "Yours first."

"My--?" He looked down at himself. His armor was split wide from collarbone to hip, and he was covered in blood. At least the blood on his leg was his own. "Oh."

" 'Oh,' " he imitated, voice tense. He began undoing the clasps on the armor and peeling away pieces. As he got closer to the wound, his hands became gentler but his voice became more harsh. "What did you think you were doing, throwing yourself in front of them like that? They could have killed you for all that you regard your own safety, which is not at all. I could have killed you if I hadn't heard you coming like an avalanche."

"That does sound like me," Gawain allowed.

"And here you are, bleeding your own blood for me again. I can't have you behaving this way."

"I don't remember making the decision," he admitted, a little lightheaded now that he had to acknowledge his injury. "I just heard you shouting, and then that thunderbolt."

Lancelot gave him a funny look. His work continued, and he peeled off the last piece of chest plate, sticky with blood. He lifted away bits of green tunic, now blackened and clinging to flesh and gore alike. Then he poured water over Gawain's shoulder and chest and belly and hip, began to lay strips of linen blanket over it as bandages. He wrapped a long band around his ribs where the wound was deepest, and pulled the wound shut with it, tied it off. Then another below and over it, and another below and over that, until the bleeding slowed. Then he sat back and rinsed his hands, and shed his own cloak, rolled up his bloodied sleeve.

"There now," he chided. "That little thing. Was it so worth it?"

Gawain told the water skin from him and rinsed the slice in his arm, only half a hand's length and not deep enough to sever the muscle. "Yes," he answered, voice warm and genuine. "It truly was." He bound it up carefully and then looked up to Lancelot.

He was staring openly with wonder.

He felt suddenly self-conscious about everything in the world. "What? Did I miss a spot?"

"You cut your hair for me. You killed that faun so I didn't have to. You brought me food and watched over me and sang to us. You worked yourself halfway to a coma to provide for me when I was weak. You saved me from the river. You saved me from myself." He listed these in the done of an accusation. "Are you in love with me?"

"Yes." The answer was gentle and honest. There was nothing guarded in his expression nor did he reach for him, nor did he retreat.

Lancelot was struck dumb. He stared, amazed, for a long minute. 

"If you do not feel the same way," he said quietly, "I will live happily for the rest of my days as your friend. It is already a gift, to be at your side."

More amazement yet. Instinctually, the next word that came out of his mouth was "Don't."

Gawain flinched and looked away. "As you wish."

"Don't think," Lancelot continued, choosing his words more carefully, "that I deserve your love. Don't think that I can ever be good enough for you. Don't ever."

"Those are two commands I've already broken," he admitted. "And I'm not sure I can agree to them. But if you want a life without me, I can trouble you no more."

"Don't," he begged this time, stopping him from rising. "I can't say this right. Wait."

Gawain waited, daring to look again.

Lancelot was a portrait of moonlit turmoil. He very carefully folded his arms around him, caring not to lean on his wound. He just held him for a moment, watery blood getting on both of them. "All of the times over the past year that I thought we were going to die, I was happy knowing that I would die with you beside me. When I thought that you would hate me, I feared what it would be like to live without you. I thought you'd never put your hand on my shoulder again, or smile the way you do for me sometimes, or teach me how to be around people, or that I wouldn't smell you on me anymore. That you would want me out of your sight. I fell to pieces and you listened, you put me back together. You make me whole."

Gawain's heart tried to beat itself to death in his chest. There wasn't enough air. "Do you mean to say--?"

"Yes, I mean to say, that I love you with all my heart, and I need you beside me, and even if I don't deserve you, I'm not fool enough to turn you away."

He exhaled at last and wrapped his arms around Lancelot, pulling him to his chest and not caring about the pain. He was dizzy with relief. "I love you," he mumbled into his curly hair. "I love you, I love you, I love you. I don't want anything to ever hurt you again."

Lancelot barked a short laugh and laid a hand on the back of his head. "I can't believe this is happening," he admitted. "It's like a dream."

"Me either." He turned his head and laid a soft kiss on Lancelot's wrist, tasting his own blood there, feeling the flutter of his pulse. He sighed and hummed.

He sat back and released the knight from his embrace, but kept hold of him. "How long have you been keeping this inside of you?"

"Since I returned from the earth to find you in our camp, with the boy at your side. Since you renounced the church and threw yourself at our feet. You're so very brave and strong."

"You're a fool for a lost cause, aren't you?"

"All causes are lost causes," he deflected easily. "Except for the ones we fight for together." He took Lancelot's arms in his hands and pulled him forward, kissed him deeply, pouring all his sincerity and months of burning hope into them.

When they parted, Lancelot was breathless, his face hot. Parts of him stirred that he hadn't allowed to stir before, and something had awoken that he had buried and thought dead. He moaned softly.

Gawain's voice rumbled through him. "There are things we need to work out. But first we need to be away from this mess."

He licked his lips, but nodded and slowly untangled his body from Gawain's. When had that happened. 

"We'll take their horses," the knight took over, worse injured but still somehow more able to walk. "Ah. A trophy, for Squirrel, so he doesn't go haring off on any quests on his own."

Lancelot held up a finger, then rifled around in one of the collapsed tents, pulled out a leather-bound book. "Their weapon."

They mounted two nervous horses and rode north, leaving broad tracks that in the light of morning would be easy to follow. Then they abandoned the horses, setting them loose and spooking them so they ran in different directions. It took hours on foot, and all the strength they had left, but they made it back to the fey camp without losing any more blood.

Lancelot took Gawain directly to the healer's tent and pushed him to lie down on a mattress, and set to work cutting loose the improvised bandages. With the lamp light, he was able to better see the extent of the wound, and the places it had pulled open again during their escape. 

Gawain tried not to look. "Can I have something to bite, while you do this?"

Lancelot found him a strip of leather and waited til it was set between his teeth. Then he patiently, meticulously pulled bits of wool and badly formed clots from the wound, rinsed it with clean water and then strong alcohol, a little of which he tipped into Gawain's mouth.

The knight gripped the sides of the mattress so hard the fabric tore, but did not cry out. By the time the stitching was half done, the sun was rising and the noises of the camp had begun.

Pym walked in on a sweaty, red-faced, panting Gawain and Lancelot's look of tired determination, face close to his lower belly. She pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips. Of course, of course it would be this way. 

She made enough noise that Lancelot knew she was there, bringing over the lamp and hanging it closer by for a better angle. She pushed Lancelot gently away and took over the stitching, her fingers smaller and more nimble, and definitely less exhausted.

"I suppose you disinfected this first?"

Lancelot nodded, moving to mop sweat from Gawain's brow. "With grain spirits."

"There's slippery willow bark in the third box of the cabinet, and milk of poppy in the chest-- here." She passed him the loop of keys from her belt.

He moved quickly to unlock the chest and took one of the many identical brown glass bottles, then locked it up after. He gently stroked Gawain's forehead to get his attention, and took the leather strap from his mouth. "How much?"

"Half," Pym advised.

Lancelot lifted his head and tipped the bottle's contents into his mouth a little at a time, until half was gone. He corked the remainder and placed it nearby, replacing the leather band.

Pym tied off the stitch and then dabbed away the blood that still oozed from the wound, tucked a towel under his side, and passed Lancelot yet another clean cloth. She went calmly to the apothecary cabinet opened a door in the bottom, took a green glass bottle of some dark liquid, and gave it over also. "Put a little on the cloth, and then dab the wound until the bleeding stops. Then lay linen over it for now. Don't let him move." She turned to go.

"You're leaving?" Lancelot asked incredulously.

"I'm going to get my morning cuppa, and you're going to stand there and listen to whatever comes out of his subconscious. I'll tie the tent shut so no one interrupts you love birds." And she did. 

He did as he was told, monitoring Gawain as he slowly relaxed, and spat out the leather strap. 

"Mm," Gawain finally made a sound. "Hm."

"Feeling better?" He asked.

A little nod. He heaved a sigh. "Mm. He rolled his head to the side and regarded Lancelot through glassy eyes. "Mm going to get hurt sometimes. I's part of the job. I can't not."

"Likewise," Lancelot answered back, "but you can stop throwing yourself into harm's way like that. The time for that is over. I love you."

"Likewise," Gawain snarked, sarcastic even drugged. "You want to die. I won't let you. You don't..." He sighed again, struggling to keep his eyes open. "Don't deserve any more pain."

He squeezed Gawain's hand. "Then we will agree. Neither of us will be reckless with our lives anymore."

"Just want to protect you," he sighed.

Lancelot stroked his forehead, brushing back tangles of hair full of sweat and blood. He leaned down and kissed that reckless forehead. "You should rest. It's over now."

"Hm." Gawain smiled. "I killed five churchmen for you."

"You were very heroic," Lancelot agreed. "Never do that again."

"Anyone who hurts you," he insisted solemnly.

He smiled and carefully propped himself next to the mattress so he could curl up around him, somehow wrapping his arm over his neck and holding his head in the hollow between his chin and his chest. "Shhh. We're safe now. I'm safe now."

"Mm," Gawain hummed appreciatively, eyes drifting closed.

Exhausted, Lancelot followed right after. "Thank you for a wonderful night."

Gawain smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your comments and kudos! You all are the best. Until next time!


	7. Down to the river to pray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cw: light masochism, self-harm, rough sex, anal sex, biting, blood.
> 
> Reassurances: enthusiastic consent, considerate partners, aftercare
> 
> THIS CHAPTER IS MOSTLY SEX, PARTLY CUTE.

Epilogue - 

It took some weeks of twice a day wound care before the horrible gash finally closed and stayed closed. They kept him well doped for the first week, so he would mostly sleep and not rip any stitches. The second week they didn't need to drug him; an infection developed in spite of their care, and for three days he burned with fever and did whatever they told him to do without trouble. Then he slept to recover from the fever. 

In the third week, he decided having a bath was more important than resting. He took his second set of clothes and made his way carefully down to the river, where he peeled off his sweat-soaked set and soaked them, then spread them in the sun. Then he eased himself into the water up to the waist, sighing as the cold took some of the pain away. 

It took a long time, but he had nothing but time these days. 

When he was clean as he could get without opening the wound, he lay out on the grass alongside his clothes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun. It was a pleasant surprise when, perhaps an hour later, a familiar face appeared in his field of vision.

"What are you doing out?"

"Getting clean," he grumped. "You're blocking my sun."

"Pym hasn't given you permission to be out."

He shrugged, ignoring how it pulled at the stitches. "She doesn't have to smell me all day and night."

The disapproval softened. "Don't hurt yourself to make me comfortable."

He chuckled. "I was talking about me." He gestured. "You may as well help me up, since you're here."

Carefully, carefully they made it back to the tent. He hung his damp clothes from the tent pole and sat on a crate to begin wrapping fresh bandages. Of course, his tent mate took the bandages out of his hands and took over, and he didn't mind. Instead, he breathed deeper than he had in some time, enduring the pull at his stitches to get the scent of wool and charcoal from the fire.

"Are you smelling me?" He asked, amused.

"Yes," he confirmed.

"And what do I smell like to a person with a totally normal sense of smell?"

He smirked. "Wood smoke, fog, and promises. What do I smell like?"

"Like you need another week of rest."

He snorted. "It's almost time to cut your hair. Mine too, again."

He tied off the bandage and leaned in for a kiss. When they parted, he gave him his best challenge face. "Maybe I don't want to. Maybe I don't ever want to cut my hair again. Or yours."

Gawain's lips parted slightly, but he couldn't find any words to put through them.

Another week passed, with him evading medical advice like a true guerilla warrior and Lancelot patiently reminding him to take care of himself. Once closed, the flesh knit quickly, and he was able to go without bandages. The scar promised to be impressive. 

One evening, he went to the river again to wash, but as he removed his shirt and belt, he sensed something was off. The birds were too distant. There was a faint whimpering sound somewhere upstream. He followed it on as silent feet as he could manage. 

His heart felt like it dropped from his chest to the very pit of him. 

Lancelot, naked, eyes closed, knelt in the water and struck himself on the back and arms with a switch. He would strike in sets of ten, then bow his head and pause for a few moments, then begin again. His back was already full of angry, red welts.

When he reached again to strike himself, a large, warm hand wrapped around his and drew it away, took the switch from him. 

He opened his eyes in panic and found himself inescapably close to Gawain. 

He seemed so full of questions and worry. But instead, he asked, "Does this feel good to you?" He gestured with his chin to what sat, half hard, just under the water line.

Anxious but unable to think of a way to escape, he simply answered honestly. "Yes."

Gawain studied the switch for a moment. "Does it feel as good or better, when you care for your back, after?"

He licked his lips. "I don't. I leave the marks there, I-- I like the ache. It follows me for a long time. It feels like I'm alive."

"If this brings you pleasure, would you entrust it to me?" He asked, voice low.

Lancelot's eyebrows lifted. "I thought you would be angry, to know."

"Maybe I am," Gawain growled lowly. "Maybe I'll have to punish you for it." He wrapped the switch around one hand and broke it in half. "Don't hurt yourself anymore. You're mine." Then he grabbed Lancelot's arms roughly and hauled him forward. Instead of kissing him, as he would normally have done, he bit down hard on the muscle between his shoulder and neck.

Lancelot hissed and writhed in his hold, but did not pull away. Instead, he pushed closer, and Gawain felt the insistent poke of his erection against his leg.

He released the bite and licked the wound, tongue flat and hot and firm. He tucked his face next to Lancelot's ear and growled into it. "That will follow you. That will remind you that you're mine." He ran his hands along his partner's abused back, both to cause pain and to check for how bad and how many wounds there were. It was pretty bad; he would see to them later.

Lancelot shivered and pushed his back into his hand, moaning slightly.

"Look at you," Gawain tsked. "Already so ready. Next time, you wait for me."

He nodded his head eagerly. "Yes. Yes. I need you."

He smiled, pleased with this answer. "I'm going to do such things for you. I'm going to twist you up, and then pull you apart. But if it gets to be too much, pull my hair. Tell me to stop, and I will." He took a moment to nuzzle the spot behind his ear. "There is nothing and no one more important to me than you. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he whispered.

"What are you going to do, if you want me to stop?"

Lancelot reached up and tangled his fingers in Gawain's hair, giving it a pull.

"That's right. You're so good." He lifted his partner to straddle him, putting his hips out of the water and his erection between them. He dug his fingers into the place where the muscles of his arms met his elbow, where the nerve was most exposed.

He grunted, but held still. "Is that all you've got?" he dared. "I've had more painful stubbed toes."

Gawain bared his teeth and shifted his hands to his partner's sides, digging his thumbs under his shoulder blades and pressing up.

Lancelot hissed and arched his back, then bent into it.

Gawain threw those arms over his shoulders and grabbed his hips. "Hold on to me," he ordered, and then stood, and Lancelot could feel his muscles tighten, working to lift him and surround him.

He stroked his shoulders appreciatively, and purred. "I like this. You're so perfect."

He smiled and gently, so gently laid Lancelot down on a grassy part of the bank-- but not too grassy. Stones pressed into his tender back. Gawain laid all his weight on top of him, and Lancelot choked back an undignified groan. Their erections were sandwiched between them, which felt divine, but the extra weight pressed him into the bank, and the rocks dug into his skin, nudged at his ribs insistently.

Lancelot had a moment to adjust, before that growl was vibrating through his entire body.

"I'm going to touch you. Remember what to do."

He nodded eagerly. "Please."

"Mm," he growled again. He dragged his hand down the length of Lancelot's body, then he shifted, keeping him pinned with his chest but lifting his hips, guiding his right leg up until the sole was flat against the earth, and his hips were tilted up.

Then he bit down on Lancelot's shoulder again and poked a finger insistently at his ass. It was dry and rough, and it burned as he entered, but the pain made him feel elated. The smell of oak and steel made him feel safe enough to fall apart, to come open, to--

\--make a mess of both of their bellies. 

Gawain worked his finger inside of him as he came so hard that his vision whited out. 

He felt an amused chuckle vibrate through his body, and felt his lover shift, draw back. "No," he whimpered, pushing himself down on the finger desperately. "Stay," he gasped. "More."

Gawain raised his eyebrows incredulously. "More?"

"Hurt me," Lancelot begged, already nearly incoherent. His entire body was on fire, not just his softening dick, and he was sure that if he could just endure a little more, he could have that bliss again.

He dutifully inserted a second finger and pushed it into him as his partner's legs wrapped around his waist, his arms around his middle, pressing them as closely together as possible. He watched the desperate discomfort war with determination, pain with the pursuit of pleasure, and marvelled at him. "Still good?"

He moaned. "I can endure so much more," he promised.

Gawain pushed him open from the inside, adding a third finger and pushing deeper, intentionally avoiding the point of pleasure. "If we go any harder, you're going to tear," he warned. He felt his partner hardening again against his belly, hot and still sticky.

Lancelot whined impatiently. "I don't-- hm-"

He removed his fingers and spat into his palm, stroking himself. "Do you want me inside of you, or do you want me to use my hands?"

He was hardly in a position to be making decisions, but he distantly appreciated the courtesy of asking. "I want your cock," he whimpered, feeling a little neglected at the moment.

"Hold on," he advised. Then he adjusted their position, holding Lancelot down with a hand on his chest and collarbone but lifting his hips and entering his stretched ass terribly slowly. He grunted at the heat and tightness, and needed a moment to adjust and let his partner adjust.

Lancelot was incoherent, writhing around him and urging him forward with his legs behind his hips. "Gawain," he gasped, but he could manage no additional words.

He met his lover's eyes and smiled, his rough nature yielding for a moment to tenderness. "You are incredible," he praised him, leaning in to kiss the parts of his chin and neck that he could reach. Then he wrapped his free hand around Lancelot's own cock. He began moving his hand and hips together, slow but rhythmic. "You're so beautiful," he growled, "so strong and good." 

Lancelot whimpered, brain short-circuiting around the pain of the position and the pleasure of the experience. He grasped the arm at his chest by the wrist, and pushed himself down onto his lover's dick, up into his hand. His back scraped against the stones, his chest pressed against the restricting hand. He whimpered harder and then begged senselessly. "Please, please please please--"

Gawain was nearly at the end of his ability, having gone so long without any contact at all. He whispered a warning to his lover, jerked his hips hard for a few rough thrusts. As soon as he felt wetness in his hand, he let go, releasing what felt like a year and a half of sexual frustration. 

Lancelot's body clenched around him hard enough to hurt, as he bathed both of their chests in more cum. He grasped his lover's shoulders and made a sound sweeter and sexier than any song. When he came down from the high of it, he locked his legs behind Gawain's hips. "Stay," he pleaded. "Stay inside me. Just for awhile. Please."

He wondered how much abuse his softening cock was going to take, but this was what his lover wanted, so he shifted, propping himself on his arms, lying on top of and inside him. He gently kissed that jawline, watching that blissed out face for signs of returning intelligence.

After long, tender moments, he relaxed beneath him, unclenching and unwrapping. 

He grunted at the discomfort, extracted his softened cock, and adjusted to stay laying on top. 

They admired each other and pet each other quite tenderly, each surprising the other with the depths of their gentleness.

Until Gawain reached up and traced the marks on his face with the barest hint of his lips, then kissed them. "You have a rare beauty, like a tree growing from a cliffside, making its way where none other would dare." He grazed the tips of his clean hand against the edge of his ear, down to the soft skin and hard lines of his throat. "Your voice is like the whisper of linens when you are soft, and when you are hard, oh how you sing. When I hurt you, you struggle for more. When I love you, you melt into me. Ah, I won't have any other. You are too perfect."

Lancelot wondered how he was so chatty and poetic after all they had done. He feebly tried to return the compliments. "You are the first I have wanted and enjoyed. I cannot imagine ever wanting anyone else."

Gawain pulled him into a strong hug, letting his tears fall to the ground instead of troubling his lover with them. "Then you are mine, and I am yours, to the end of all days."

He wrapped shaking arms around the warm, protective soul that claimed him, and wished he could really melt into him as he had described. Then they would never be apart for a single instant.

Gawain released him slowly and with a generous rain of kisses. "Now," he said in his most commanding voice, "You will let me take care of you. Stay here. Relax." He got to his feet and took his own shirt down to the water and soaked it, then returned to wipe away the mess of them. He rinsed the shirt in the river again, then slipped a hand under Lancelot's back to lift him to sit.

Lancelot started to sit up on his own power, but Gawain stopped him with his other hand on his chest, keeping him in an angle that would be awkward to maintain on his own, so that he had to lean his weight onto the arm at his back.

"No, no," Gawain chided gently. "It's my turn to take care of you. Just relax. I've got you."

Unsure of what was happening, Lancelot steeled himself and took a dive into trust. He relaxed into those strong arms, which did not drop him nor hurt him nor forget any aspect of him. 

Gawain made a pleased noise and held him across the chest, gently dabbing away the dirt and blood from his back, removing small stones that had got stuck in his skin. Then he spread the shirt on the ground behind him and lay him back, kissed his forehead, pushed his hair out of his eyes. "Stay here. Rest. I won't go far."

Lancelot trusted him and drifted into a half sleeping, half waking state. The sounds of birds and late summer insects and Gawain moving in the river nearby, combined with the exhausted satisfaction of two orgasms and the relatively faint after-image pleasure of the pain in his back and shoulders and hips... Lancelot didn't stand a chance. He didn't recognize anything from reality until he was in Gawain's arms, his clothes a bundle draped across his lap to protect his modesty. He opened his eyes and marveled for a moment at his lover, the way his new scar rippled over his chest, taught from the weight of carrying him. He ran a finger over the scar.

Gawain rumbled a pleased little rumble and caught his fingers in his mouth, gave the fingertips a little suck before releasing them. "That's for you. I did that for you."

"You bled for me," Lancelot whispered. He gazed in wonder at him as they left the river bank, then slipped back through camp along the emptiest of routes and stole into their own tent like thieves. 

Once there, Gawain was heartbreakingly attentive. He fetched water and poultice and cleaned the wounds on his back. He bandaged them gently and laid a kiss over each one, and on the back of his neck. He rubbed the muscles of his shoulders and hips around the thumb-sized bruises forming there, until the muscles were more liquid than solid, then he dabbed a tincture of witch hazel on each one. He dabbed grain spirits on the bite wound on his shoulder, feeling a little embarrassed but also pleased that the mark would linger for at least a week. He rolled Lancelot onto his side carefully and examined every inch of him for harm, kissed every inch of his neck and chest as if checking off boxes on a list. He spread a blanket over his naked form and gave him a long, deep kiss, not pushing Lancelot to participate or even respond to the touch, but pleased when a tired hand brushed appreciatively against his collarbone.

"Rest," he ordered. "For as long as you please. If you need me, I am close by."

He busied himself making a supper for them; elk with a sauce of thyme and butter, vegetables roasted with rosemary, a little scoop of boiled grain with peppercorn and herba, and mulled wine. He set this all out on their improvised crate table, then gently woke his lover with a soft touch. "Your supper is ready," he informed softly. "But if you are not hungry, you can linger here as long as you wish."

Lancelot's stomach betrayed him with a fierce and insistent rumble. He sat up, blushing slightly at the noise.

Gawain smiled fondly and helped him to his feet, guided him courteously to their table and held his elbow until he was properly seated.

Lancelot's eyes widened at the fare before him. "You can cook?" He over at his lover where he was seating himself at the other end of the trencher. "We've been eating woodruff and burnt rabbit all this time, and you can cook?" 

He shrugged sheepishly. "Real culinary efforts require a little more than forage and game, but yes, when there are supplies, I can cook."

Lancelot dug in without asking permission or waiting for Gawain to start, for once, earning him a warm and proud regard from the other. He took his time with the spread, making appreciative noises from time to time. When he was satisfied in every way, he roundly complimented the chef. "That is the best meal I have eaten in my entire life, and I've eaten at the tables of nobles and important men."

Gawain practically glowed at the praise. "I will do this for you as often as we are able, supplies permitting. No more burnt rabbit than strictly necessary." He cleared trencher and knives away, but left their cups for more wine, then he returned and poured a third round for them both. "Drink until you can't think anymore. Then you're going back in that bed and I've got more for you."

Lancelot swayed a little in his seat, feeling his knees go weak. "Ha--?"

He smiled, somewhere between fond and predatory. "I'm going to pleasure you until you can't remember it was ever any other way."

Lancelot believed him.


End file.
